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Another styletip ... Ampersand The ampersand (&) substitutes for the word and. In normal text, and should be used instead: January 1 and 2, not January 1 & 2. Retain ampersands in titles of works or organizations, such as The Tom & Jerry Show or AT&T. Ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion in tables, infoboxes, and similar contexts where space is limited. Read more ... Add this to your user page by typing in {{Styletips}}

New script now live

New sources script I'm pleased to announce that an improved user script targeted at rendering cited sources more consistent and congruent with Misplaced Pages naming conventions is now live, and resides at the same namespace as the previous version of the script. It has been built and testing mainly using Firefox and Safari, is much more comprehensive in its action and may take longer to run. Suggestions and features requests will be most welcome.

-- Ohconfucius  01:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

guardian.co.uk

Hello. For information, guardian.co.uk isn't the same as The Guardian. Articles published on the former don't always appear in the latter. Each article on the guardian.co.uk website has an Article history button, which gives its publication history. For examples, see this, which has The Guardian below the author's byline and the article history popup has quite detailed information on when it was published on .co.uk, that "a version" appeared in the printed newspaper, when it was last modified, etc. Whereas this has guardian.co.uk below the author's byline and the article history popup says it was published on guardian.co.uk but nothing else.

What this comes down to, I think, is that it isn't appropriate to change work=guardian.co.uk to work=The Guardian by script, because that change is quite likely to be incorrect. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:04, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

• Thank you for your comment and education about how The Guardian works. I have adjusted the article concerned, and will consider how to adjust my script to reflect the substance of your comments. My initial feeling is that whilst the website may be separate and have different/wider coverage, it is a product/channel that exists under the same "The Guardian" brandname – the brand logo is used on every news story irrespective of the credit and article history. I can't help but feel that web-exclusive content of newspapers, including many journalists' own blogs, may be just a progressive evolution similar to our own WP:NOT#PAPER. And given that we also usually a link to the article concerned within citations, the substitution therefore of |work=The Guardian for |publisher=guardian.co.uk is not wholly incorrect or inappropriate. -- Ohconfucius  02:08, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Some editors cite guardian.co.uk because they habitually cite domain name as publisher, and many more cite The Guardian and aren't aware of or aren't bothered by any difference. But some editors are precise in their citations, deliberately choosing "guardian.co.uk" (or "The Guardian website") if that's where the article came from. Times are changing, and perhaps I'm old-fashioned (or unduly picky), but I think "The Guardian" does still imply the printed daily newspaper rather than a brand. "The Guardian website" carries stories from both the Guardian and Observer newspapers as well as purely web-published content. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:50, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

"Precision" is all well and good when things are static and clear-cut. The distinction you point to is a mere glitch, and doesn't mean people who identify The Guardian and its website as one and the same are wrong.

When we cite a printed article, WP convention dictates that we include the page number and the edition (if any); when we cite a web article, we link to the article concerned (unless of course it's behind a paywall). But in the old days, "to publish" means to write the articles, typeset, proofread it, roll out the presses at midnight, load the vans at 4 am, and send the paper boys onto the street at 6 am, at which time you hear cries of "read all about it!".

In this day and age of new media, traditional demarcation lines are blurred or disappear altogether. You silently "publish" (send content around the world), at the press of a single button. Updating can be instantaneous, and individual articles may be "published" or "updated" at any time independent of the whole publication of which it may supposedly form a part. I'm not even sure why publishers still sit on the artificial distinction between their weekday editions and their Sunday ones. Murdoch's closure of the NOTW and immediate creation of The Sun on Sunday just shows what bullshit this distinction really is. The dust hasn't quite settled yet on the new media landscape because reading on newsprint is a deeply ingrained habit for many of the older generation, but the lines are already becoming clear. Soon, there will be no more paper journals, and all "newspapers" and "magazines" will be little pdf files that you can call up on your iPads, smart phones or even intelligent wristwatches. -- Ohconfucius  01:40, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

List of programs broadcast by CyBC

Hello, just letting you know I removed the prod from the above article as it was previously listed at AfD. Thank you. Rotten regard 17:33, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

• The same applies to List of programs broadcast by Middle East Television. Rotten regard 17:36, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

List of television programmes broadcast by TVB

I have removed the {{prod}} tag from List of television programmes broadcast by TVB, which you proposed for deletion, because I think that the deletion of this article may be controversial. I'm leaving this message here to notify you about it. If you still think the article should be deleted, please don't add the {{prod}} template back to the article. Instead, feel free to list it at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion. Thanks! KTC (talk) 12:33, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Richard Nixon talk page notice

I have added a section on the talk page for the article Richard Nixon titled "Section deleted on 13 December 2012." Please share your thoughts on the talk page. Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 17:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

C<!-- -->enturyentury-2012-12-18T06:01:00.000Z">

I've noticed a couple of places where you had inserted a comment between the "C" and the rest of the word "Century" at the next pass. I eliminated it the first time I saw it, but when I saw that you had done it in more than one place, I figure you must have had a good reason. So, why were you doing that? Thanks, SchreiberBike (talk) 06:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)entury"> entury">

• Thanks for doing that. You're right. It was a manual change, and an attempt to fool one of my scripts into not downcasing 'Century'. It's no longer needed as I've found there are too many false positives when I downcase by script that I disabled that line of code. -- Ohconfucius  08:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Deletion

While there are many things at MOS that should be deleted on sight, that was not one of them. Apteva (talk) 08:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

• It was trolling (and off topic), and you damn well know it. It is also disingenuous for you to pretend that that deleted post was a valuable contribution to the talk page, more so than most of the other stuff there. You ought to vent your frustrations in a blog or an essay instead, and give upi your lone crusade on Misplaced Pages. I can assure you you will feel a lot better for it. Don't be surprised, however, that nothing will happen on Misplaced Pages because or in spite of your efforts in that connection. You should be aware that there are, however, two solid benefits: you won't make yourself a dick any more than you have done up to now, and it will have a beneficial impact on your state of mental health. -- Ohconfucius  08:26, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
  • The entire thread was off topic. The sole purpose of a talk page is to improve the article. We really need to create a separate help desk for good writing. But at some point someone should really do the move that was suggested. It came up in the first archive of the article, but was not fully explored and was dropped. I have only heard it called the Mexican American War, but evidently I learned that indirectly from the one out of ten books that call it that, instead of from the 9/10 that call it the Mexican War. Most encyclopedias call it the Mexican War (if not all). Apteva (talk) 08:37, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
    1. Please spare me that tosh. That thread was entirely appropriate. By being related to a guideline, the MOS talk page has a wider role than article talk pages: people often go there with specific queries as to matters of style. I cannot think of a more appropriate forum as articles (and their talk pages) are on considerably fewer watchlists than MOS. Also, issues raised often apply to more than one article, so such discussion helps to improve the encyclopaedia as a whole.
    2. The resources you were looking for were perhaps not sufficiently well publicised, but do exist. They may be incomplete because they are the result of the personal effort of one dedicated WP editor who writes for a living but is who often extremely busy (See User:Tony1/Writing exercise box). If you find these useful, as I did, please feel free to publicise these in any way you can. If you have any specific requests as to the precise scope of writing guidance which may be lacking, I'm sure Tony will be open to your suggestions, and will prioritise such a request accordingly.
    3. If you believe the proper title for the article is "Mexican War", then you should propose a page move request. But from all I can tell by the discussions you have led, it's disingenuous. My impression is that you would prefer to see any title so long as it doesn't have the dreaded endash. -- Ohconfucius  01:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Clearly that is because of all of the slander that goes on at MOS, and is totally undeserving. It is though, a fact that I did not learn about the issue with Mexican War until I posted it at WP:Lame, and a fact that I recognize that bringing up the move now by me would be immediately misinterpreted and bring up a whole can of worms that has nothing to do with anything, which is why I did not do that. It really is amazing how much assuming bad faith there is that goes on - and I agree with one editor who noted that no one edits out of bad faith, but there sure is an awful lot of bad conduct going on. Now.

1. We have a wp:help desk for that. All editing questions go there, including do I spell cat with a c or a k and do I use a historic or an historic. That is where those questions belong, not at the MOS talk page.
2. You have totally lost me here. I have no clue what resources you had in mind that I may have been looking for. If it is about the MOS offering suggestions on writing, I think it should offer none. And #3 I have already covered. But one thing that never works on wikipedia is to preference anything with "you should". No one here needs to ever make a single edit ever, and we are totally blessed to have about three thousand regular editors, like me, who hang around a lot and make thousands of editors. Telling anyone what to do is like trying to herd cats. It never works out as intended. Hopefully someone someday will read Wp:title and wp:lame and put two and two together and request that move to Mexican War. I am pretty sure that I am not the only person who is capable of doing that. Apteva (talk) 09:14, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, what you say about good faith may be true. But continually making waves isn't a good way of ensuring that that good faith, however much or little that actually exists, persists.

  You said there were no guides to good writing, and I told you there were. I was merely answering the question. Did you not click on the link, or did you click on the link and find nothing? -- Ohconfucius  02:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

• I did look at it, but it is not in WP space. I would love to see that happen and would be happy to work with other editors to make that happen, along with moving all of the MOS good writing suggestions there, like when to use hyphens and dashes. All of that is essay material, not guideline. Apteva (talk) 20:37, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

• Why is it so important that the writing resources must be in WP space anyway? It makes very little practical difference, AFAICT. You can always suggest to Tony to move it to WP space if you feel so strongly about it. I'm sure he has a good reason why he thinks it belongs where it belongs. I'd say much of it is his personal effort, but you can always see with him how to work with him on it. I don't actually agree with you about your "essay material" view, and what you're advocating will distil down to a difference of viewpoint that you'll need to learn to accommodate if you want to stay sane around here. -- Ohconfucius  10:24, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

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Merry Christmas / Happy New Year

Dl2000 (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the Christmas cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas5}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Dl2000 (talk) 03:42, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks, and merry Christmas to you too. -- Ohconfucius  03:45, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!!

For all you do!! Have a wonderful HOLIDAY!!

Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the Christmas cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas5}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Season's tidings!

To you and yours, Have a Merry ______ (fill in the blank) and Happy New Year! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 01:41, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

RFC/U for Apteva: move to close

I am notifying all participants in Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Apteva that Dicklyon has moved to close the RFC/U, with a summary on the talkpage. Editors may now support or oppose the motion, or add comments:

• Link to the move to close

Please consider adding your signature, so that the matter can be resolved.

Best wishes,

Noetica 04:18, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Holiday Cheer

		Holiday Cheer
		Michael Q. Schmidt is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone with whom you had disagreements in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings. - MQS

Clarification

Hello Ohconfucius,

I read your comment with interest.

• My experience in editing is that most UK editors are not fussed if metric or imperial measurements come first. In the case of footballers, the BBC and Premier League and some of the individual teams just give metric measurements for personal height and weight of players. In this particular instance it is better to have the height and weight documented properly. and if consistency is required, metrics have the edge, because the teams and leagues almost always give the metric measures but don't always give imperial measures, even as supplementary information.
• I have not met any overt conflict in documenting the height of the footballers. Before I began to document their height, most were undocumented while some were Imperial first and others were metric first. When I finished, all were documented and were metric first, except for one team, when another editor went through the team and documented the Imperial measures that he found. The proof of the acceptability of these edits is that they have remained untouched since I made them, in 2011. The only conflict has come from two editors who have a record of fighting with others. See
• I believe that over-rigid guidelines cause conflict. Most people don't care or don't notice which units come first. There is a general tendency to switch to metric weights and measures in the UK, and rigid guidelines will get in the way of this process. Saying that ENGVAR insists on putting some units first and not others does not take sufficient account of either the division in UK usage or the fact that it is changing.
• Worse still, rigid guidelines, and guidelines then lend themselves to a rigid interpretation, give a weapon to those who want to resist any change whatsoever. In two cases my fiercest critics are two editors who were topic banned in May 2011 a ban that was only lifted on a trial basis on 26 October 2012.

I would be interested in reading your response to the points I have made.

Happy New Year,

Michael Glass (talk) 04:33, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I tried to put this on your page but it came up in another person's greeting!

Happy New Year!

		Best wishes for the New Year!
		Wishing you and yours a joyous, healthful, and productive 2013! Please accept a belated thank you for the well wishes upon my retirement as FAC delegate this year, and apologies for the false alarm of my first—and hopefully last—retirement; the well wishes extended me were most kind, but I decided to return, re-committed, when another blocked sock was revealed as one of the factors aggravating the FA pages this year. Maintaining standards in featured content requires vigilance, dedication and knowledge of people like you, who are needed; reviews are always welcome at FAC, FAR and TFA requests. Somehow, somehow we never ever seem to do nothin' completely nice and easy, but here's hoping that 2013 will see a peaceful road ahead and a return to the quality and comaraderie that defines the FA process, with the help of many dedicated Wikipedians! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

BBC

Just so you know, your script-assisted changes to Gabriel Heinze did a number on the references in that article. A lot of the sources were to the BBC, and the "cite news" templates should say "|work=BBC Sport |publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation "; I'm not sure why, but you changed that just to say "|publisher=BBC Sport". This is wrong as the "publisher" parameter is supposed to be for the company that published the reference, and the "work" parameter is for the work (i.e. the media outlet) produced by that publisher. I have reverted the edit for now, but feel free to run your script on that page again once you've sorted out the bug I've mentioned. – PeeJay 10:11, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

BBC Sport, like BBC News, is a channel. It is not a "work" in the definition that we have here at Misplaced Pages; it should certainly not be italicised. If the source was a BBC programme, such as Horizon or Panorama, then it needs to be italicised (ie put into the '|work=' parameter). And once you've cited "BBC Whatever", whether as a publisher or as a work, it's totally redundant to then cite "British Broadcasting Corporation". Regards, -- Ohconfucius  10:15, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's something new that I didn't know before. My apologies. – PeeJay 11:15, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I meant to also refer you to Help:Citation Style 1, WP:CITE, {{Cite}}, and the script documentation here. Let me know if this doesn't make sense. Cheers, -- Ohconfucius  12:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Script assisted changes

I have partially reverted this change because it changed the name within a template which are the section names used in the original EB1911 article ({{sfn|Atkinson|1911|loc=11. First Battle of Newbury, September 20, 1643}} ~= (Atkinson 1911, 11. First Battle of Newbury, September 20, 1643) harv error: no target: CITEREFAtkinson1911 (help)). -- PBS (talk) 21:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks. Aaaaargh! yet another pesky template... -- Ohconfucius  01:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Taj Mahal - "rubbish"

I'm absolutely astonished by your edit comment on Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style when you said "Rubbish" in response to my comment "Taj Mahal should not be written in BrE". Why should it be written in British English? It's in India, built by Indians, owned by Indians, etc. It's not British. Anyway, someone has stated a discussion on this at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style#Taj Mahal and British English. I'd be interested in your views. Bazonka (talk) 18:10, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• My objection was not due to insistence that the article must be written in British English, but the implication by your change that it must be written exclusively in Indian English. I see it as no more acceptable for articles on Papua New Guinea to be written exclusively in Pidgin English because it's the vernacular there; ditto for Hong Kong articles. I'm sure there are other examples of 'local' words in use elsewhere in the dictionary, but I disdain at but tolerate usage of the Indian 'crore', which has easy numerical equivalents in standard English but means fuck all to anyone outside India. In linguistic matters, Misplaced Pages should abide by WP:COMMONALITY, making articles more intelligible for readers anywhere. Localisation works against that. -- Ohconfucius  03:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Although there has been no formal process for gaining consensus on this, it's never been questioned on en.WP that the language should be either a variety of "standard" English, or close to it. And the mesolect and basilect dialects of English in a region will probably be unsuitable; for example, in Liberia, the acrolect would possibly be acceptable, but non-standard grammar and lexical items that are not widely understood outside Liberia would need to be modified. It's a set of practicalities, don't you agree, Bazonka? And thanks for your work on en.WP, too. Tony (talk) 04:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I think there are two issues here. 1) What version of English should be used for a particular article? 2) How do we implement those varieties of English? Question 1 (which is the one that was under discussion at WT:MOS) is reasonably easy to answer if we follow the WP:ENGVAR rules, but question 2 is tricker, and as you say, WP:COMMONALITY comes into play. Indian English mostly uses British English spellings, and if we apply the Commonality guidelines, then articles will be largely the same as if they were in BrE, but not necessarily exactly the same. When it comes to crores, I agree that these are horribly unintelligible to non-Indians, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them, as long as there is a "translation". It's a bit like an American English article that uses feet or pounds - whilst not as obscure as crores, these are still meaningless to many readers, so we also give metric equivalents. As Tony says, "it's a set of practicalities". Bazonka (talk) 17:11, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you in principle, and it may appear more inclusive, but your banishing of 'British English' from the MOS example implies more than what you say above, IMHO. It would have been better choosing to apply "standard English" or "international English" to Taj Mahal instead of "Indian English". Using and needing to translate common units of measure (such as pounds and kilometres, kilograms and miles) are one thing, but allowing and thus needing to translate the crore, from mesolect intelligible to 12% of the world's population, is being excessively tolerant and unnecessarily clutters up text. However, in that same vein, it would be just as meaningful to have wan as a unit for all Chinese articles, with the same 'translation', of course – which would align Each main turbine has a capacity of 700 MW. in for example the Three Gorges Dam with the relevant Chinese-language source (带额定负荷70万千瓦并网). I'm not actually advocating its use, but this unit would be intelligible to a greater number of the world's population compared with the crore. I would just like to see greater adhesion to WP:COMMONALITY, whereas your interpretation of WP:ENGVAR may seem to imply less. -- Ohconfucius  02:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Just butting on, as I stumbled across this. The example for Jamaica quotes "standard Jamaican English" (thankfully, as the patois is practically unintelligible to non-Jamaicans). Would this wording not be appropriate for Indian English also? Skinsmoke (talk) 06:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Scripted date changes

Hello. Thank you for your consistency improvements to Girl's Day! However, I just wanted to bring up a few points regarding the edit.

1) You had changed the predominant date format from "MMMM D, YYYY" to "D MMMM YYYY". As per WP:DATERET, these changes were unnecessary and potentially controversial.

2) With regards to the date changes of #1, you did not fully change all of the dates – the "accessdate" field of the cite web template was left unchanged.

As the edit had other useful changes (most notably, white space) and that there are very few consistent editors on the article to raise objections to the change, I decided not to revert the changes. However, you should be careful about making these same changes in the future as other articles may not be so lenient. Thank you again for your contribution. Michaelcomella (talk) 23:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

PS – On that note, I do find the "MMMM D, YYYY" format rather nonsensical, even if it is my local custom. :P Michaelcomella (talk) 23:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for your message. Indeed you are correct about the necessity of the changes. I was distracted by the block of dmy dates in the table, and aligned them all in accordance with those dates. I have now reperformed that edit. FYI, I make it a point not to change yyyy-mm-dd access dates, because some editors feel very strongly about these. Regards, -- Ohconfucius  02:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

My Sweet Lord/Citation Style 1

Ohconfucius, what the hell are you doing? I can see from messages above this one that you seem to make a habit of implementing unnecessary and ill-considered changes to articles. In the "My Sweet Lord" article (and/or other Harrison ones, if I remember right), your repeated imposing of full stop followed by capital R for 'retrieved' in the online citations is bordering on the obsessed. As with other Harrison articles I've helped take to GA, editorial style in MSL is both consistent throughout and as per any relevant style requirements; GA reviewers have seen to that if I hadn't already – that's good enough for me, so it should be good enough for you. The fact that you supplied a link to CS1 is laughable. It says there: "The use of CS1 or of templates is not compulsory"; "Misplaced Pages does not have a single house style. Editors may choose any option they want; one article need not match what is done in other articles or what is done in professional publications or recommended by academic style guides. However, citations within a given article should follow a consistent style." By that criteria, My Sweet Lord gets full marks all round, just like The Concert for Bangladesh and every other Harrison article you've felt the need to mess with. And it is "messing with" – why don't you put your efforts into improving wikipedia by developing an article's content and scope, instead of being a community nuisance? If a wiki-wide stipulation for templates and particular citing methods ever eventuates, I'll of course comply and I'd be in no position to do otherwise. In the WP I'm most involved in, there have been a couple of recently implemented requirements that I've completely disagreed with on principle, but others put considerable effort into winning the argument and I've resigned myself to having to comply. From a variety of pages dealing with style issues, I've always understood that there was a relatively free rein permitted for methods of citation – so thank you for the CS1 link, because you've now given me a specific page to support what was simply a vague understanding before. I will get advice from other contributors and then take this issue up in the necessary forum if you continue this behaviour. I get the impression I might be doing the community a favour. You've obviously got considerable time to dedicate to wikipedia; why don't you channel it into helping take the encyclopedia's articles forward? JG66 (talk) 04:38, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Ooh, la la, the tone of the above is just a bit too 'familiar', considering we've never 'met'. I may write a reply to it at another juncture. -- Ohconfucius  09:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I assume that some of your more flippant or arrogant remarks were rhetorical devices, so won't reply to or otherwise address them to avoid any drama. But here is a proseline response to the key points you raised:

• 1/ you seem to make a habit of implementing unnecessary and ill-considered changes to articles.
  • you don't define "unnecessary" or "ill-considered", but seem to be expressing your opinion; In practice, vandalism apart, an edit is only considered "unnecessary" if it has no effect on the output rendered on screen. As I do happen to make a large number of contributions of very similar nature, I don't entirely object to you using the term "habit".

    I try to improve the encyclopaedia using my knowledge of style issues and skills in writing regexes. Scripts allow consistency to be achieved much more efficiently. Some people may complain because they don't initially understand the rules or what I'm trying to achieve, but they usually come around once all this has been explained to them. I believe the changes I make are necessary, because most of them (E&OE) are supported by various parts of the house style guide. It would be churlish to say "ill-considered" because I have spent many hours contemplating the tasks to be executed by the script, and many more hours writing and testing the script(s) so as to best do the necessary with as few false positives and false negatives and other errors as possible.

• 2/ As with other Harrison articles I've helped take to GA, editorial style in MSL is both consistent throughout and as per any relevant style requirements;
  • Consistency isn't the only requirement, albeit a very important one. I reiterate: there is no major style guide that advocates citing retrieval dates in parentheses. Dates in parentheses, if ever they are used, are usually publication dates
• 3/ It says there: "The use of CS1 or of templates is not compulsory"; "Misplaced Pages does not have a single house style. Editors may choose any option they want; one article need not match what is done in other articles or what is done in professional publications or recommended by academic style guides. However, citations within a given article should follow a consistent style."
  • You imply that having retrieval dates marked in parentheses is a "style". You can't just invent a set of rules on your own and call it a "style". I contend that is only a personal notation, without support of any major style guide which is implicit in CS1, that you want imposed on articles you may be interested in. Note that I have not sought to insert any citation template into the article.
• 4/ By that criteria, My Sweet Lord gets full marks all round, just like 'The Concert for Bangladesh' and every other Harrison article you've felt the need to mess with.
  • As what you used cannot be considered a "style" in any meaningful definition of the term, its consistent application is better than nothing, but still quite irrelevant.
• 5/ I will get advice from other contributors and then take this issue up in the necessary forum if you continue this behaviour.
  • You are quite welcome to do that. But as you only seem to be interested in Harrison, and I intend to steer clear of them to avoid you being on my back, I'd say a repeat performance would be highly unlikely.

Good day. -- Ohconfucius  07:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Advisor.js

See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#User:Cameltrader/Advisor.js. I don't know if you want to take on another task, but it is a useful script that I use, but it does have some issues. --— Gadget850 (Ed) 13:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Yep, I was just looking at that post, and at the script. I have a formatting script that does but a small fraction of what Advisor does. Unfortunately, my coding skills aren't up to the job of fixing Cameltrader's script. So, I must decline. Plastikspork would be my usual port of call on stuff like that. Regards, -- Ohconfucius  15:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Using a Script bot to change citations

Please stop, all you are doing is introducing multiple errors that require a great deal of cleanup. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC).

• ??? I'm slightly mystified. Looking at your contributions, it seems you may be objecting principally to my changes to Boeing p-8 Poseidon. I would respectfully point out that Boeing and Reuters are organisations that published the articles concerned, that neither of them are "works" (ie periodicals and books) and certainly should not be italicised within the citation. I also noticed some reverts to the citations I placed, as well as he journals' names. These were changed because their official WP titles are 'Seattle Post-Intelligencer' and 'The Times of India', and of course Bloomberg has a capital 'B'. -- Ohconfucius  21:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

You have to differentiate between a title and a publisher; and yes, Boeing is the publisher. I take it that your first statement exemplifies your understanding of bibliographic notations and use of citation styles. Meanwhile, you are probably also aware of WP:Retain. Don't change things that are properly formatted. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 02:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

• I don't believe the lack of understanding is mine. WP:RETAIN has zilch to do with anything here, and I think you're over-reacting by reverting to a previous version even though I pointed out the errors to you above. The formatting was incorrect and I corrected it. Please refer to WP:ITALIC. Boeing should not be italicised, whether as a publisher or as anything except a book title (ie. a book on Boeing entitled "Boeing" or a similarly titled journal). I see you've undone me again. You're still wrong, but I won't edit war with you. -- Ohconfucius  02:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

New Zealand English

Your script has recently changed {{Use New Zealand English}} to {{Use British English}} in a couple of articles where this is not appropriate, e.g. Christchurch. There isn't a huge difference between the languages, so it's not a big deal, but the change shouldn't really happen.-gadfium 05:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

• I don't really know why the{{Use New Zealand English}} was inserted into articles. I implemented the {{Use British English}} tag, and my script inserts it. AFAICT, the templates all have the same objective. I have just added a disclaimer to the template documentation hopefully to clarify what these templates are supposed to denote or represent, or not as the case may be. Regards, -- Ohconfucius  06:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. Further to the above, can you please let me know why you inserted {{Use British English}} into The Catlins instead of {{Use New Zealand English}} ? I'm asking instead of just fixing it in case there is a specific reason. Cheers. Daveosaurus (talk) 09:49, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Hi, due to operating efficiency, and because there are no words in the script dictionary to my knowledge that are different between Br.English and NZ.English (and indeed Australian, Irish and Indian) as opposed to American or Canadian English, so the script adds the 'British English' tag as it passes. You may feel free to turn this into {{Use New Zealand English}}. I have no plans to further analyse these other spelling variants for scripting purposes, so it will have no consequence whatsoever going forwards. -- Ohconfucius  10:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for that. Was just checking before barging on ahead. Cheers. Daveosaurus (talk) 05:30, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

For heaven's sake don't let the script turn "Use Irish English" into "Use British English" anywhere, or you'll set off yet another wikiwar. The last one over British Isles was bad enough! Skinsmoke (talk) 06:39, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out. I'll adjust that. <Sign>It was never meant to be political or polemic but a practical way of tagging the two major ways of spelling on either side of the pond per WP:ENGVAR. It was much simpler before someone started inserting various templates with various English variants. -- Ohconfucius  06:43, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Just wait for the "Use Scottish English" tag to appear on articles liberally sprinkled with "outwith"! Skinsmoke (talk) 06:51, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

LOL! -- Ohconfucius  06:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Your email

Hello, Ohconfucius. You contacted me by email, but you did not indicate why the matter endangered the privacy of any editor by being handled on-wiki. I would like to give you the opportunity to email me again and indicate why that is before I respond to your email here. Seraphimblade 06:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for your message. Please check your email. -- Ohconfucius  06:57, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Konk West changes

Hi OhConfucious, I understand the changes you made to overlinking and the citations, but I am unsure why you changed the layout of the References list and have reverted the change, as it seemed to be out of line with standard Wiki practice. Let me know if there is something I have missed, as it would be goof to know for future reference.--Soulparadox (talk) 14:59, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for your message. The '30em' for citations ensure that references are clear, legible, and do not cause pages and pages of pagedowns. I believe they are widely employed across Misplaced Pages. I grant you that it may not be strictly necessary in an article with relatively low number of citations, as with Konk West, so I have no issue with the revert. Cheers, -- Ohconfucius  00:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Spelling of "role"

re this edit. I think the standard spelling in British English is without the circumflex. Certainly the OED gives "role" as the heading and "(also rôle)" below. So please could you advise your script that it shouldn't change the plain to the circumflexed version. thanks, Struway2 (talk) 09:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Second this. Plus it doesn't change roles so introduces inconsistencies in some articles. AIRcorn (talk) 02:29, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

NUFC.com

as changed in this edit to Andrew Cole, isn't Newcastle United F.C., it's a fansite known as NUFC.com. The football club's website is nufc.co.uk. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:56, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thank you for that. I did notice that the football clubs domain names usually used the .co.uk, but put the .com in for good measure. I've taken them out now. -- Ohconfucius  02:21, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Bot request

Hi Ohconfucius, When you have a free moment, could I ask you to point your bot towards a few articles I've been working on recently? I'm particularly unsure of my use of various dashes. The articles are:

• H. C. McNeile
• List of works by H. C. McNeile
• Bernard Lee on stage and screen

Many thanks if you get the chance! - SchroCat (talk) 07:26, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

•  Done - seems like you got most of it sorted out! Onwards and forwards... -- Ohconfucius  07:31, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

You're a gent and a scholar - many thanks indeed! - SchroCat (talk) 07:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Script problem

Hi, just noticed a problem with the script changes made here. It appears to add a second "df=y" to the {{birth date}} & {{death date and age}} templates. Keith D (talk) 12:16, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks. I noticd that when I was about to save, but seem to have lost my modification when had a connection interruption. I've now fixed and tested the code. -- Ohconfucius  16:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for quick response. Keith D (talk) 23:22, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I noticed other problems:

1. it continues to change titles of external sources. It shouldn't change them to meet Misplaced Pages capitalization rules.
2. it converts correct HTML breaks: <br>, to XHTML breaks <br />
3. it also doesn't make sense to change the use dmy or use mdy template date, but other scripts do that so I can't fault you. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. In reply:

1. I don't make any major capitalisation changes, only trivial ones such as "Of The" which are acceptable under 'minor typographic changes'. In most cases, this accords with the title of the relevant Misplaced Pages article. OTOH, I may transform the entire title into 'title case' if a given title is entirely in uppercase in the source link. Again, I believe this is permissible – let alone knowing that it's rude to shout out in titles ;-)
2. Now there was a discussion only weeks ago about html vs Wiki-markup that prompted me to change the code so as to add the slash. Let me see if I can find it again.
3. I try hard not to change dmy template into mdy template. For me to so so would usually involve a conscious decision that the previous tagging was incorrect or inappropriate, based on WP:TIES. They should be quite rare. Let me have examples of these, and we can discuss further. -- Ohconfucius  05:16, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Aberdaron

Hi Oh. Just questioning the change you made at Aberdaron, changing "sulfur dioxide" to "sulphur dioxide". My understanding was that "sulfur" is now the preferred form in British English, and is strongly supported by the Oxford English Dictionary (something to do with a trade-off with the Yanks—they got "sulfur" and we got "aluminium"). Skinsmoke (talk) 06:22, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

• No shit – a merger taking place between British and US English spellings! "Sulfur" is not widely accepted mainstream British usage that I am aware of, just like 'z-words' (such as "organize" vs "organise"). Oxford has always been more liberal on that front such that it supports 'z-words', so we call that Oxford spelling. For me, that's a separate script function that will trigger the prevalence of z-words and the {{use British (Oxford) English}} template insertion (rather than 'classic' British English). I'll amend the script's dictionary accordingly. Thanks, -- Ohconfucius  06:36, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Having said that, I have to admit "sulfur" is taking a bit of getting used to for my British eyes. They even had to explain it when it was used on Countdown the other day. Skinsmoke (talk) 06:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Don't blink, because next time you look, the OED will have stripped the 'u' out of words like "favour" and "parlour", and announced a merger with Merriam-Webster (not necessarily in that order). ;-) -- Ohconfucius  06:47, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't think "sulfur" is Oxford's fault. I think the trade-off came at an international scientific meet-up, as the constant warring over sulfur/sulphur and aluminum/aluminium was getting up everyone's nose. On the bright side, it's surprising to see the Yanks increasingly ditching "thru", even though I don't think it was ever official over there. The American recording industry in particular seems to increasingly favour British spelling, even for releases within the United States (probably because even the Canadians balk at some of the American varieties). Skinsmoke (talk) 07:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Moving past turf wars is good. I wish Misplaced Pages could do the same. I do hope to see an end to use of "7/12/13" to represent 12 July 2013 &endash; it's just so very confusing for someone like me who works a lot with dates. -- Ohconfucius  07:11, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

It's confusing for everyone, on both sides of the pond, as we also have "12/7/13". Thankfully, the citation template means that the "12 July 2013" format is rapidly becoming the norm (and not just in citations), and it surely can't be all that long before that style becomes mandatory throughout English Misplaced Pages. Skinsmoke (talk) 07:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

It's a big job that can't be done manually. If it interests you, I'd appreciate your support for my proposed bot, hoping that will eradicate all those misformatted dates whilst correcting 'format drift'. -- Ohconfucius  07:43, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Eek! It's a discussion about bots! LOL. Not really my field (way too technical) but, once the discussion gets going about "yes" or "no" I may well be able to wade in. Will have a look in a couple of days time. Skinsmoke (talk) 08:24, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

For the history behind thru, see Simplified Spelling Board. --— Gadget850 (Ed) 07:43, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely fascinating. Skinsmoke (talk) 04:01, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

novelization/novelisation

Your edit on James Bond Jr changed the standard Bond-article spelling of novelization to novelisation. In this particular instance the "z" spelling is British. I reverted these particular changes in the article. SchroCat himself has in past changed the spelling to favour "z" in all other Bond-related articles. We discuss this on his talk page here. User Betty Logan cited the OED to support a British "z" spelling. Whereas American dictionaries appear to use the "s" spelling. All very confusing, I know. - Fantr (talk) 21:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

• For future reference, if anyone wants z-words, all they need to do is to suitably tag the articles with {{use British (Oxford) English}}. Yep, I'm not so comfortable with the "z-words", and feel that quite a few or the ize or izations that are cropping up frequently are American constructions that don't exist in British language. "Novelization" is one such case, IMHO – Brits usually say "turned into a novel" .An interesting aside, you might have seen in the above thread, where the OED now seems to have adopted "sulfur" as a legitimate British spelling. -- Ohconfucius  01:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

MOSNUM

Please revert your alterations to the dates in the references on some glacier articles I started. MOSNUM makes it clear that in references YYYY-MM-DD is more than acceptable. All the articles I write use that format for reference dates including FAs. Thanks!--MONGO 12:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Looking at some of the articles that have been changed I see that the dates were not YYYY-MM-DD, but YYYY-M-DD, which is not an accepted format. ISO dates require leading zeroes for months and days. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

What AussieLegend said, Thanks. -- Ohconfucius  15:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The changes you made didn't add a preceding zero for the month, it switched the entire format around...and the latest you did was to put the day first.--MONGO 17:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

As you can see by the edit summaries, the changes were made by a script. In the absence of a valid format, and to be fair that's your fault, not his, the script obviously defaults to dd mmmm yyyy format, which is an approved format. --AussieLegend (✉) 00:20, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but all I did was to replace a non-compliant format with a compliant one. Perhaps, in retrospect, it would have been better to change those date instances to mdy or proper ISO. However, such fixes are fastidious and would never otherwise be done if not done by automated or semi-automated means, but at least they are consistent per MOSNUM. -- Ohconfucius  00:36, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I was going by the recent FA I did where all that was asked was that dates be all the same format and no one said a word about a preceding zero. I can't exactly remember but I did routinely have preceding zeros and I may have taken them out after someone complained about it at FAC...in the US, the standard of dates for written prose has generally been February 1, 2013...and in references, the standard (least the one I use mostly) YYYY-MM-DD, (ISO 8601), however, DD-MMMM-YYYY is becoming more commonly used. I routinely default to regionally accepted dating and spelling formats if I work on a subject outside the scope of the U.S.--MONGO 01:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Anyone who complains about YYYY-MM-DD that includedwithout leading zeros doesn't know what they are on about; but it could be simply confusion about leading zeros in dmy or mdy formats, where they are not allowed. MOSNUM does stress principally that articles should have consistent date styles, but that they can be changed in accordance with close national ties. YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601) is quite common but not 'standard' for any articles in wikipedia, but please be aware that DD-MMMM-YYYY is not an acceptable format here. I can put those glacier articles into mdy if you would prefer. -- Ohconfucius  01:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned, for the prose I use MDY with M spelled out...but for refs I use (aside from more recent edits as I stated) YYYY-MM-DD. I was never asked at any FAC to make sure the ref dates are written the same as dates are written on the article prose...only that refs are all the same and prose is all the same, but not that the two have to be the same.--MONGO 01:44, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't take issue with any of that. -- Ohconfucius  01:46, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

For my further education though, what format is this edit. I've seen it around, but I don't use it and it isn't typical of what I have seen at least in U.S. subject articles...is it used commonly elsewhere?--MONGO 01:51, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

It's a rather odd yyyy mm dd format, I've seen it less frequently than yyyy month dd or yyyy-month-dd. the latter may be recognised I think, by one style guide – perhaps the APA, but can't say for sure. None are considered acceptable per my reading of MOSNUM. -- Ohconfucius  01:54, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Please also stop changing citation "access dates" that are consistent within an article and consistent with MOS:DATEUNIFY. (, for example) According to this part of the MOS, access dates and other dates do not need to be the same format. Keeping the access dates all numbers makes this often least important of the dates in a reference somewhat less obtrusive with respect to the dates that matter more in a citation (publication date, etc.). Thank you. Novaseminary (talk) 02:30, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)I agree that accessdates that are visually different to other dates helps to separate the wheat from the chaff. To my knowledge, I am not changing any 'yyyy-mm-dd' access dates validly formatted according to WP:MOSNUM. I would refer you to the discussion above within this section about using the correct formatting for such dates. If you need further clarification as to what this involves, kindly consult ISO 8601. Regards, -- Ohconfucius  02:39, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

  I think you missed my point...while there isn't an issue with adding the preceding zero as presribed by MOS, I wasn't hoping to have the access dates changed to something other than the YYYY-MM-DD format...--MONGO 02:48, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I think we are talking cross-purposes. I think the best solution is for me to revert the changes to your glacier articles so you can fix the problem your own way. -- Ohconfucius  02:56, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that yyyy-m-dd and yyyy-m-d are not valid date formats, so they should be changed. Ohconfucius' changes standardise articles to consistent date formatting using approved date formats. In the event that it's then seen to be necessary to change to ISO format, it's a simple matter to convert the dates using a script. It's far better for an an article to have a consistent date format using an approved format than it is for the article to exist with a non-approved format. Regarding the yyyy-m-d, there is a misunderstanding that leading zeroes are not required for month and year. This isn't helped by templates like {{Start date}} and {{End date}}, which don't require the leading zeroes and are almost exclusively used without leading zeroes. --AussieLegend (✉) 03:06, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, those templates have a built-in tolerance for misformatted dates; finding such instances outside of these templates can be difficult – the difference between a hyphen and an endash doesn't show up on edit screens; they can only be found by accident or by targeted means. -- Ohconfucius  03:33, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Another example: . Only one date in the references in the entire article before that point had a non-ISO format, but you not only changed them away from ISO but also generated more inconsistencies with accessdates. If it was clear that most dates were non-ISO and of mdy or dmy, that may have been ok, but what that edit did was explicitly against WP:DATERET. --MASEM (t) 06:48, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. -- Ohconfucius  11:33, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement warning: Manual of Style and article titles policy

The Arbitration Committee has permitted administrators to impose discretionary sanctions (information on which is at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions) on any editor who is active on pages broadly related to the English Misplaced Pages Manual of Style and article titles policy. Discretionary sanctions can be used against an editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, satisfy any standard of behavior, or follow any normal editorial process. If you continue to misconduct yourself on pages relating to this topic, you may be placed under sanctions, which can include blocks, a revert limitation, or an article ban. The Committee's full decision can be read at the "Final decision" section of the decision page.

Please familiarise yourself with the information page at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, with the appropriate sections of Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Procedures, and with the case decision page before making any further edits to the pages in question. This notice is given by an uninvolved administrator and will be logged on the case decision, pursuant to the conditions of the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions system.

This warning is made as a result of the arbitration enforcement request made on 27 January 2013 concerning Noetica. Please take care, in future disputes concerning the issues mentioned above, not to misuse the arbitration enforcement noticeboard (or other fora) to cast aspersions against others or to otherwise continue personalizing stylistic disagreements, as directed by the Arbitration Committee's reminder. Regards,  Sandstein  21:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Sandstein's misunderstanding of the AE issues and consequent bogus warning

You'll probably want to read and weigh in on User talk:SMcCandlish#Arbitration enforcement warning: Manual of Style and article titles policy, especially the second round, after Sandstein made it clear that he did not even know about the AN filing that led up to the AE request, and is thus missing almost all of the facts, background, context and history. The "you can now be blocked without further notice by anyone with a hare up their butt" warning we received was unfounded, unjust and invalid, and I'm not going to stand for being treated like a wikicriminal this way. I've devoted unbelievable amounts of time and effort to this project and I'll be damned if I'll be lynched for it. Note that User:Neotarf has already resigned over the matter, and User:Noetica indicated, before this pointless boot dropped, some willingness to do so as well. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 12:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

• Like you, I'm furious at that 'warning' for making an "unhelpful comment" that cast aspersions on fellow editors. All I did was bei factual, and I stand by my opinion that Apteva had been an utter prick. That threat to shut up would be potentially be a violation of my free spech rights. If Apteva continues to be a disruptive little shit, I will continue to say so, whatever some over-officious sysop says I should or should not do. -- Ohconfucius  13:17, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Overlink?

Hi....why is the script now eliminating the U.S. state and replacing it with US...? like here...--MONGO 15:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

• The link to 'U.S. state' falls within my definition of an overlinked situation. The article is about a glacier. It happens to be in Montana, which happens to be a state in the US of A. The relationship of 'Jackson Glacier' to 'U.S. State' is sufficiently remote that few would step back in amazement that Montana – already a primary link – is a US state and want to find out more about what one is, so its utility approximates to zero.

  I replaced 'U.S. state' with 'US State' because it seems to be the trend on WP and in many style guides to drop the full stops, but we can still discuss making future changes punctuation-neutral. Regards, -- Ohconfucius  02:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)